You Only Have 10 Fingers
Summary
What are the top 3 things you are trying to achieve by the end of this quarter, or year?
Are your fingers (resources) allocated in the right way for what you are trying to achieve?
Do you have clarity and an alignment internally about the outcomes for these priorities by the end of the quarter/year?
I've been waving my hands and waggling my fingers at a lot of people recently!
We’re well into Q2 FY27, and over halfway through the calendar year (did someone say less than 150 sleeps until Christmas?!).
I’ve been talking with clients about quarterly objectives - reviewing the last quarter, and identifying what we’re prioritising across the business looking forward. Although I’ve noticed a range of looks - many people look exhausted, overwhelmed, or just frustrated that they have not achieved everything they wanted to - they all boil down to the same thing.
We all only have 24 hours in the day, 7 days a week.
There's a line, often credited to Bill Gates, although it’s also attributed to futurist Roy Amara (and others):
“People tend to overestimate what they can do in the short term, and underestimate what they can achieve in the long term.”
One organisation had already been identifying their priorities on a quarterly basis, but still felt overwhelmed, and the traffic-light colour-coded review told the story of a long list of things not completed, or not done at all. We reviewed the list and found it was actually a task list, rather than a short priority list of true outcomes which would shift the dial in their business.
Most of us have a long list of things we want to achieve, financial years and quarters just put a frame on it. It can be pretty depressing if you always feel as if you are facing a mountain to climb and don’t feel as if you’re making headway when you review what you have achieved so far, and the new list of priorities for the period ahead. I’ve talked about that before - so I’ve added a couple of links to other posts at the end of this post.
What’s Your Capacity?
So the reason I’ve been waggling my fingers is this:
Think of these 10 fingers as representing your total capacity. This is all of your time, all of your budget, all of your team's energy, all of your headspace … you get the gist.
It’s capped at 10. No matter how hard you work - that’s it.
NZ’s labour productivity remains below its long-term average and continues to trail Australia and the UK according to Xero’s Small Business Insights (XSBI) report, so it’s not a matter of doing more hours leads to achieving more. Reynolds Associates finds organisations that commit to fewer, clearer priorities outperform peers that try to do everything.
When doing this exercise, one of my clients responded:
"but I want more points."
Running BAU (business as usual) will already be taking up a good chunk of those. For most businesses, that might be around 7.
Which means you have 3 points left to allocate across anything new - a new market, a new hire, a new product, a system overhaul, whatever your growth priorities look like right now.
The mistake I see most often isn't a lack of ambition from people, but trying to achieve multiple new initiatives with those 3 points.
You can have more, you just have to cut all of your existing fingers into half to give you 20 half-points instead of 10 full ones. You might move a lot of things a tiny little bit. But nothing is actually moving the dial for your business.
And then we get to the end of the quarter and wonder why they feel like we’ve been flat out busy, but still have a list of things we hoped to achieve.
Going back to the question about wanting more points - you can’t realistically enter a new market, build a new system, develop a new product, or test a new approach all at the same time and have much success.
Prioritise Your Top 3 Objectives
So, as well as wagging those fingers, what I've been working through with clients, is to think about the top 1-3 priorities maximum to focus on this quarter.
What is it that is going to shift the dial for your business?
Not all the busy stuff (and trust me…I can completely get lost down that hole with a list of tasks to do), but what are the three things that you want to get to the end of the quarter and have achieved, because you know they are the most important to my business, right now.
Outcome Objectives
Once you have chosen those 1-3 priorities - how will you know you’ve achieved them?
Put a SMART description in place - by the end of this quarter this is what Good looks like for this task.
If it is a big priority, it might span multiple quarters - so focus on what you will achieve by the end of this quarter and describe that; but also describe what you are trying to achieve at the end point too. That can be a useful exercise to keep everyone on the team focused on what we’re trying to achieve.
And, don’t forget to be really purposeful in listing what you have decided not to do (for now at least).
Deciding not to do something doesn't mean it doesn't matter. It just means you're being honest about the fact that spreading half a point across it isn't going to make a meaningful difference anyway. You are consciously deciding to park it and come back to it when you can give it real focus. Download this Quarterly Priorities template to get you started.
Get Your Team To Do This
Doing this exercise with leadership teams has been an interesting exercise, and some of them have said they were also going to do this exercise with their teams, not just at the leadership level, but getting each person, or team to think about where their points are going this quarter.
It's a surprisingly good way to surface where effort is being spread too thinly, where people are working on things that might have felt important once, but aren’t anymore, or who simply do not have the capacity for more.
Get In Touch
If you’d like me to come and chat with you and waggle my fingers at you - please get in touch. It can sometimes be helpful to have someone who can challenge your thinking and hold you to account.
I provide leadership, support and direction for growing Kiwi tech and innovation companies as your 'fractional' (part-time) Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) - an affordable way to get senior thinking and direction for businesses.
If you could do with some help to grow your business, get in touch
Helen Shorthouse
Fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
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